Solved a mystery, and all I had to do was look at my car.
Here’s the mystery told online on PLOS Research News in an interview of Casper Hallman by Beth Baker (nee Jones).* Hallman and colleagues have chronicled the decline in flying insects over a 27-year period. The group measured the biomass of flying insects by capturing them in Malaise traps. Hallman says, “We were very surprised by the extent of the decline in flying insects that we found, measuring over three-quarters of the total flying insect biomass over 27 years.”
Of course, Hallman and colleagues have a life’s work ahead of them: “We would like to further consider the causes….” Say no more. Grants will fly across the academic highway to the group for years to come.
Think I have an idea, but I don’t want to prevent Hallman and colleagues from getting more grants to study insects that aren’t there. So, keep this between the two of us.
Projected global car sales for 2017 were 79 million units according to Statista, The Statistics Portal (Statistics and Studies from More than 22,500 Sources).* Now consider this: The United States has 6,722,347 kilometers (4,167, 855 miles) of roads; China has 4,733,500 Kilometers, and Germany, the country of the high-speed Autobahn and Hallman’s insect study, has 644,480 kilometers of roads. No kidding. You can look it up.*** Many of those roads have multiple lanes, and many of those lanes have multiple cars. What’s that chance of crossing one of those highways without being hit? Dumb bugs.
See where I’m going with this? Is there a windshield anywhere in the summer or in the tropics and subtropics all year round that doesn’t sport a splattered flying insect? Think; if just one insect hit the windshield of each of those 79 million vehicles sold in 2017, Earth would have—yes, your math is correct—79 million fewer flying insects.
You want to bring back flying insects, Casper? Eliminate cars.**** Oh! And outlaw kids eating ice cream cones while they ride their bikes through a swarm of gnats.
* http://researchnews.plos.org/2017/10/18/fraught-future-for-flying-insects/
** https://www.statista.com/statistics/199974/us-car-sales-since-1951/
*** https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_road_network_size
****I can't say for sure, but I would hazard a guess that Casper drives a car, and maybe drives fast enough to kill a flying bug. Is this a case of do as I say and not do as I do?
Here’s the mystery told online on PLOS Research News in an interview of Casper Hallman by Beth Baker (nee Jones).* Hallman and colleagues have chronicled the decline in flying insects over a 27-year period. The group measured the biomass of flying insects by capturing them in Malaise traps. Hallman says, “We were very surprised by the extent of the decline in flying insects that we found, measuring over three-quarters of the total flying insect biomass over 27 years.”
Of course, Hallman and colleagues have a life’s work ahead of them: “We would like to further consider the causes….” Say no more. Grants will fly across the academic highway to the group for years to come.
Think I have an idea, but I don’t want to prevent Hallman and colleagues from getting more grants to study insects that aren’t there. So, keep this between the two of us.
Projected global car sales for 2017 were 79 million units according to Statista, The Statistics Portal (Statistics and Studies from More than 22,500 Sources).* Now consider this: The United States has 6,722,347 kilometers (4,167, 855 miles) of roads; China has 4,733,500 Kilometers, and Germany, the country of the high-speed Autobahn and Hallman’s insect study, has 644,480 kilometers of roads. No kidding. You can look it up.*** Many of those roads have multiple lanes, and many of those lanes have multiple cars. What’s that chance of crossing one of those highways without being hit? Dumb bugs.
See where I’m going with this? Is there a windshield anywhere in the summer or in the tropics and subtropics all year round that doesn’t sport a splattered flying insect? Think; if just one insect hit the windshield of each of those 79 million vehicles sold in 2017, Earth would have—yes, your math is correct—79 million fewer flying insects.
You want to bring back flying insects, Casper? Eliminate cars.**** Oh! And outlaw kids eating ice cream cones while they ride their bikes through a swarm of gnats.
* http://researchnews.plos.org/2017/10/18/fraught-future-for-flying-insects/
** https://www.statista.com/statistics/199974/us-car-sales-since-1951/
*** https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_road_network_size
****I can't say for sure, but I would hazard a guess that Casper drives a car, and maybe drives fast enough to kill a flying bug. Is this a case of do as I say and not do as I do?
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